English Surnames: Their Sources and SignificationsBardsley, Charles Wareing Endell
History
English Surnames: Their Sources and Significations
Bardsley, Charles Wareing Endell
Names, English; Names, Personal -- English
Thus it is we frequently light upon such entries as ‘John Betyn,’ ‘Betin
de Friscobald,’ ‘Robert Betonson,’ ‘John Bettenson,’ or ‘Thomas
Betanson.’ These latter of course soon dropped into ‘Beatson’ and
‘Betson,’ which, with ‘Beton’ and ‘Beaton,’ are still common to our
directories. ‘Emma,’ too, as a Norman name has left its mark. By a pure
accident, however, as Miss Yonge points out, it had got a place previous
to the Conquest among the Saxons, through the fact of the daughter of
Richard I. of Normandy marrying first Ethelred, surnamed the Unready,
and then Canute the Great. Thus, though it has not unfrequently been
claimed as of Saxon origin, it is not so in reality. The general
spelling is ‘Emme,’ and the pet ‘Emmot’ or ‘Emmet’ is found in such
names as ‘Emmota Plummer’ or ‘Emmetta Catton.’ This at once guides us
into the source of our ‘Emmots,’ ‘Emmetts,’[53] ‘Emmes,’ ‘Emsons,’
‘Empsons,’ and ‘Emmotsons.’[54]
Almost as equal a favourite as ‘Emma’ was ‘Cecilia.’ This was a name
introduced at the Conquest in the person of Cecile, a daughter of
William I., and it soon found itself a favourite among high and low as
‘Cicely,’ or still shorter as ‘Cis’ or ‘Sis,’ although the latter seems
to have been the more general form. In Piers Plowman, however, is
preserved the more correct initial. I have already quoted him when he
speaks so familiarly of
Cesse the souteresse.
In all the ballads of the seventeenth century, on the other hand, it is
always ‘Sis,’ ‘Siss’ or ‘Sys.’
Long have I lived a bachelor’s life,
And had no mind to marry;
But now I would fain have a wife,
Either Doll, Kate, Sis, or Mary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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